It Looks Like Obama's Afghanistan Policy

is a long shot at best, and most likely will be a failure:

Something else Obama’s team confronted was the impossibility of military victory.

“Mr. Gates and others,” the Times reported, “talked about the limits of the American ability to actually defeat the Taliban; they were an indigenous force in Afghan society, part of the political fabric.”

One may as well talk of driving Baptists out of Texas.

That said, anybody who imagined that this president, any American president, was going to abruptly pull out of a NATO action in Afghanistan or negotiate from a position of weakness, potentially leading to the spectacle of rag-tag Taliban militiamen overrunning Kabul in beat-up Japanese pickups and threatening a consequent re-establishment of al-Qa’ida bases there simply isn’t dealing with political reality, Afghan or American.

The success of Obama’s plan further hinges upon Pakistan’s ability to confront jihadist elements on its side of the border. Essentially, the president is like a poker player trying to draw to an inside straight, gambling that his troop buildup can buy to enough time to bribe Taliban fighters motivated by dislike of foreign invaders more than jihad into changing sides, another Afghan tradition.

It’s definitely a long shot. The hopeful part of Obama’s policy, however, resides precisely in the calculated ambiguity of the July 2011 date.

Miscellaneous

Roman Polanski will be released Friday to his Swiss chalet where he will be monitored.
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No surprise here as the NY state senate rejected legalizing same-sex marriage.

It's just not gonna happen nationwide in my lifetime or in the next.
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Obama's making a fool's choice in his escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

However, I don't think he was preferable to Hillary Clinton by a long shot. Only somebody who is ignorant of Obama's neoliberal tendencies would write such a thing.
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Obama's Speech Tonight

about Afghanistan, which has many people on the "left" very disappointed:

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This is Another Reason

I don't have much faith the president will serve more than one term.

Miscellaneous News

I will make it a point, when I return to southern Oregon, to hike up both Table Rocks.

I have posted pictures and video before. There are many pretty flowers, and this time I will make sure I don't disturb the vernal pools!
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The New York Times was kind of enough in its obituary of movie composer Maurice Jarre to provide the pronunciation of his last name, which is Zhar.
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Women in Afghanistan are set to get even more "rights" in their country.
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Obama & Afghanistan

So much for the notion Obama is some kind of lefty peacenik; he's just as much a neocon as McCain.

It's a myth Obama "lurched to the right" once Clinton was (supposedly) out of the picture. He always was to the right of all of the candidates running for the Democratic nomination; he just hid that fact from his starry-eyed supporters.